The attack on Syria was the neocon’s way of asserting their position of dominance within the US government. It was a signal to the winner of next week’s election that the winner would have to deal with the neocon’s reality of foreign policy and not with any campaign promises, and that reality is there will be no reconciliation with the Syrian government ever and that US troops will not leave Iraq anytime soon. I disagree with fellow blogger Xymphora who seems to think Obama’s supposed imminent victory means a demise of neocon control over government, but I do agree with Xymp’s statement that ‘peace is the death of zionism’, hence why else would America attack a government that has shown a willingness to be at peace with its neighbors and America’s allies, unless that ally (Israel) doesn’t want peace. The excuse that the attack was against infiltrators into Iraq from Syria has also been thoroughly discounted.

A top US commander Thursday voiced optimism US troop levels could be cut substantially in western Iraq particularly after provincial elections in the former insurgent stronghold.

Marine Corps Major General John Kelly, who commands the 25,000 US troops in the west, said the tally of security incidents had fallen so low as to be “almost meaningless now.”

“So I would say that I’m very optimistic that we could start to reduce numbers,” he said.

In fact, one could view this attack as a shot across the bow of certain elements within even the military that talk of troop reductions and stability are not consistent with the program of instability and perpetual war that has fueled both the Israeli government and now our own.

There is the possibility that whoever was killed was an enemy to both Syria and the US and as such was a targeted assassination agreed upon by both parties. As with so much about Mid East occurrences that will never be known; however the message is that the US is in Iraq to stay, regardless of the Maliki government’s decision on the SOFA agreement that for the moment is dead. That reality has been foisted on the winner of Tuesday’s election whether he likes it or not.

The SOFA, status of force agreement, between the US and Iraq is in jeopardy of not being ratified by the Iraqi government, which has repeatedly asked US forces to leave Iraq, and as a result violence in that country has intensified despite the success of the “surge”. So in order to get the Iraqis to see the necessity of keeping US forces on their soil, the neocons have set about destabilizing Iraq’s neighbors. This latest violation of international law also allows the neocons who want to destabilize all Arab states makes it difficult for whoever becomes President to even talk to the Arabs who along with the rest of the world are outraged over this latest attack on Syrian territory.

It seems Sarah Palin is more than a maverick. Here’s an interesting quote from a McCain insider from CNN,

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone….She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

“Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

She doesn’t trust her family, well so much for family values and the first dude, and she sees herself as a major player in Republican party politics in the future? This woman has a huge ego. I’m sure McCain is kicking his own butt over the decision to have her as a running mate. Or perhaps Palin is not as subservient as Cindy McCain who can take being called a *cunt* in public and still stand by her man. Either way it appears Palin is not much liked by her partners associates and has decided to carve out her own niche in the Party, beyond Alaska. The latter would be unfortunate for her to pursue, since coming down to the lower 48 Palin has more often than not appeared like a moose in the headlights than as someone enlightened.

More than one person has said the choice of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate was enough to convince them not to vote the Republican ticket. That fact has been emphasized by a Washington Post article which states, ‘Perceptions of Palin grow increasingly negative’.

In polling conducted Wednesday and Thursday evenings, after the disclosure that the Republican National Committee used political funds to help Palin assemble a wardrobe for the campaign, 51 percent said they have a negative impression of her. Fewer, 46 percent, said they have a favorable view. That marks a stark turnaround from early September, when 59 percent of likely voters held positive opinions.

The declines in Palin’s ratings have been even more substantial among the very voters Republicans aimed to woo. The percentage of white women viewing her favorably dropped 21 points since early September; among independent women, it fell 24 points.

It was an insult to the electorate for McCain to choose Palin. It was a sexist choice; he wanted someone who looked photogenic next to him, physically attractive even if she had nothing intellectually to offer. However saying that you are voting for a pair of legs in a skirt is not the politically correct thing to say. Realizing they are being played the people are voicing their disapproval.

In reality Palin is her own worse foe, or enemy. Public gaff after the next seems to follow her everywhere she goes, from the trooper gate scandal to being ill prepared for media interviews to revelations that the RNC has spent money for clothes she claims were off the rack but are really tailor made, etc. she is dogged by missteps and inaccuracies that are too easily documented.

More and more details are emerging about Ashley Todd and her role in the McCain campaign and the campaign’s role in dissemenating the false story about her being attacked. This unfortunate young woman was used by elements in THE REPUBLICAN PARTY who are heartless and deceitful to the brim and didn’t mind destroying her personal integrity or taking down America in their quest for power. How else do you explain how this young woman was used by McCain Pennsylvania campaign communications director Peter Feldman who was out hyping details of her story before they were even known by any but the victim and the police?

Long before any facts about the Ashley Todd case had been established, McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director told reporters the alleged attacker had told the woman, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

This notion that Todd was a campaign volunteer has also been as quickly eliminated. In an effort to distance themselves from her, College Republican National Committee’s Executive Director Ethan Eilon said, “We have terminated her effective today. Obviously, we had know(sic) idea she was making this story up.” There might be some truth to that because as most campaigns do, organizations are formed that are interconnected but at the same time independent enough in order to guarantee plausible deniability, but first news reports claim Todd was working on the Pennsylvania campaign’s as a phone operator volunteer which probably put her in some sort of contact with Feldman, the communication’s director.

In that capacity and as a “volunteer” she was not working for the CRNC, which was actually paying her to work for them at some point in the campaign. She was on loan as it were to the campaign. I assert that Feldman sexually intimidated and harassed this young woman into making up this story for obvious political reasons. Not being able to say how she received her injuries is significant, especially the black eye, and shows she’s still in denial, protecting someone (the person who battered her perhaps) or hiding something about this strange story. Perhaps it was Feldman’s attempt to give meaning to a relationship he fully manipulated in some perverse way for his candidate, McCain.

Unfortunately, the media should pursue this story to see just how far it reaches into the McCain campaign, but it won’t, and to be fair, doing so would not be in the best interest of this young woman’s mental health. However, it would expose the depths at which the “system” has gone to exacerbate the adversarial aspects of political campaigning to the detriment of the “political process”. At the very least, however, Feldman should join Ashley Todd in jail for workplace harassment and John McCain should insist on no less. Don’t expect that to happen.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

That’s not the kind of news John McCain wants to hear so close to the elections, but it’s what intelligence agencies are reporting in their monitoring of the airwaves. We’ve been told how important it is to have super secret sensitive monitoring of all forms of communications and the best money can buy is saying that Al-Qaeda wants John McCain to win the presidential elections. That’s not news however, for the same can be said for the 2004 elections when bin laden himself used the old disinformation ploy to claim support for John Kerry’s race against Bush while secretly hoping for Bush to win.

Why would terrorists want their ardent enemies to win elections in order to continue the fight against them? Quite simply the US is paying a greater price fighting terrorism than they are in securing American interests against terrorism, and especially in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. As for the former, it was never a threat against American interests nor those of its allies, and America knew that going into the war. What that war has done is destabilize an oil producing country and its neighbors, caused a refugee problem that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, if not more, and presented America with the specter of war with another country, Iran. Afghanistan, a perpetually poor country which had the misfortune of once hosting bin laden now looms large as a staging ground for incursions and another possible war in another Muslim country, Pakistan. In both conflicts we are no closer to getting bin laden, if you think that was ever our goal, and yet we’ve alienated millions of Muslims telling them in the words of Thomas Friedman to ‘suck on this’. It would appear to me therefore that Thomas Friedman and bin laden have much more in common than bin laden and the Muslim masses he purports to represent; neither one of them is interested in seeing the peaceful coexistence of Muslims with the West because in post cold war international relations there would be no one to justify the tremendous defense spending currently taking place in world governments, and especially ours. The current budget for defense is twice what it was in 2000 when Bush took office and with fighting taking place on two fronts, the US military will need to be rebuilt at a tremendous expense, no matter who wins the November elections.

The idea that bin laden is an instrument for US foreign policy has traction when one considers the large amounts of money spent to “fight” him and the members of his group, but what is happening on an even larger scale is the fight the US is waging with Muslim societies world wide. Under the leadership of the neoconservative cabal wing of the Republican Party, Islamofascism has taken expression and become the enemy of our Nation. It is defined as any body of Muslims who are not ok with the notion that the US can go anywhere, break any law and do anything to fight its perceived enemies and in the process make more and new enemies. It is a policy of perpetual confrontation which only benefits a large military complex that needs conflict on which to survive, which gets us back again to Osama bin laden who can only survive as a “hero” for Muslims if there is conflict between them and who “he” defines as their enemy, the US. What’s interesting to me is we have more than enough people who are willing to whet the appetite of both parties, the neocons of Washington, and al-Qaeda of some cave in the Hindu-Kush mountain range somewhere. Perhaps it’s time to break this cycle.